Canada’s Productivity Crisis: It Starts with People

Debates about Canada’s chronic productivity lag frequently center on investment, innovation, technology, and competitiveness. These factors are certainly important—but they are all fundamentally underpinned by a single engine: people.

It is people who make investment decisions, adopt and adapt technology, improve processes, build organizations, lead change, and ultimately create value through their knowledge, skills, relationships, and judgment.

Yet at the heart of Canada’s productivity puzzle lies a paradox: despite boasting one of the world’s highest rates of educational attainment, our productivity continues to lag behind that of our peers. This disconnect exposes a deeper issue—Canada’s struggle to transform learning into tangible workforce value and sustained productivity gains.

The Productivity Project convenes researchers, employers, educators, and policy leaders to tackle a critical question: How can Canada better develop, mobilize, recognize, and renew the human capabilities that drive productivity and, ultimately, prosperity?